• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Ransom Center Magazine

  • Articles
  • Sections
    • Art
    • Books + Manuscripts
    • Conservation
    • Exhibitions + Events
    • Film
    • Literature
    • Photography
    • Research + Teaching
    • Theatre + Performing Arts
  • Print Edition

The magically real digital archive of Gabriel García Márquez

August 23, 2016 - Jullianne Ballou

The magically real digital archive of Gabriel García Márquez

In December 2015, the Council on Library and Information Resources granted the Harry Ransom Center a Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives award to scan more than 24,000 pages from the Gabriel García Márquez archive.

The project, “Sharing ‘Gabo’ with the World,” is now under way, and members of the project team have digitized more than a 2,500 manuscript pages. Over the next 18 months, we will scan more manuscripts, notebooks, scrapbooks, photographs, and ephemera from the archive. Below are items of interest we’ve come across so far, including García Márquez’s pitch for a film about a perfect soccer match and extensive edits to draft pages of Of Love and Other Demons.

The finished project will include an online archive of 24,000 pages from the papers of García Márquez and the implementation of Mirador, an image viewer that allows researchers to view side-by-side comparisons of digitized texts within a single interface, helping them identify successive stages of revision among drafts.

Gabriel García Márquez’s typed “film pitch for a perfect soccer game.”
Gabriel García Márquez’s typed “Idea for a film about a perfect soccer match" (in Spanish).
Gabriel García Márquez’s verso of a draft page of "Of Love and Other Demons."
A draft page of "Of Love and Other Demons" with García Márquez's edits.

The online archive will also serve as an introduction to archival collections to those not accustomed to using archival materials. Last month I had the privilege of speaking about the García Márquez archive to students attending Austin Bat Cave’s magical realism writing workshop. One workshop exercise used García Márquez’s popular short story “Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes” (“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”) as a prompt for the students’ own stories. With access to the online collection, students, including future writers, will be able to learn from García Márquez’s process first-hand.

Photograph courtesy of Austin Bat Cave.
Photograph courtesy of Austin Bat Cave.

Filed Under: Authors, Digital Collections Tagged With: archives, CLIR, CLIR Garcia Marquez, Council on Library and Information Resources, digital collections, digitization, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, grant, Mirador, philanthropy, Sharing Gabo with the World, students

About Jullianne Ballou

Jullianne Ballou is a project librarian at the Harry Ransom Center.

Primary Sidebar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4_kazYMjNM

Recent Posts

  • Celebrate with us in 2023
  • Photographer Laura Wilson delves into the lives of writers with stunning portraits
  • A childhood gift inspires a lifelong passion for India and map-collecting
  • “Dog” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  • A Greek fragment is the first-known New Testament papyrus written on the front side of a scroll

Tags

acquisition Alice's Adventures in Wonderland archive archives Art Books Cataloging Conservation Council on Library and Information Resources David Foster Wallace David O. Selznick digitization exhibition Exhibitions Fellows Find Fellowships Film Frank Reaugh Frank Reaugh: Landscapes of Texas and the American West Gabriel Garcia Marquez Gabriel Garcia Marquez archive Gone with the Wind I have seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America Lewis Carroll literature Magnum Photos Manuscripts Meet the Staff Nobel Prize Norman Bel Geddes Norman Mailer Performing Arts Photography poetry preservation Publishing Research Robert De Niro Shakespeare theater The King James Bible: Its History and Influence The Making of Gone With The Wind Undergraduate What is Research? World War I

Archives

Before Footer

Sign up for eNews

Our monthly newsletter highlights news, exhibitions, and programs.

Connect With Us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

About

Ransom Center Magazine is an online and print publication sharing stories and news about the Harry Ransom Center, its collections, and the creative community surrounding it.

Copyright © 2023 Harry Ransom Center

Web Accessibility · Web Privacy